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QaR
November 2009 
Tuesday Evening - Rumi
Sings to Eagles
Remember me.
I will be with you in the grave
on the night you leave behind
your shop and your family.
When you hear my soft voice
echoing in your tomb,
you will realize
that you were never hidden from my eyes.
I am the pure awareness within your heart,
with you during joy and celebration,
suffering and despair.
On that strange and fateful night
you will hear a familiar voice --
you'll be rescued from the fangs of snakes
and the searing sting of scorpions.
The euphoria of love will sweep over your grave;
it will bring wine and friends, candles and food.
When the light of realization dawns,
shouting and upheaval
will rise up from the graves!
The dust of ages will be stirred
by the cities of ecstasy,
by the banging of drums,
by the clamor of revolt!
Dead bodies will tear off their shrouds
and stuff their ears in fright--
What use are the senses and the ears
before the blast of that Trumpet?
Look and you will see my form
whether you are looking at yourself
or toward that noise and confusion.
Don't be blurry-eyed,
See me clearly-
See my beauty without the old eyes of delusion.
Beware! Beware!
Don't mistake me for this human form.
The soul is not obscured by forms.
Even if it were wrapped in a hundred folds of felt
the rays of the soul's light
would still shine through.
Beat the drum,
Follow the minstrels of the city.
It's a day of renewal
when every young man
walks boldly on the path of love.
Had everyone sought God
Instead of crumbs and copper coins
They would not be sitting on the edge of the moat
in darkness and regret.
What kind of gossip-house
have you opened in our city?
Close your lips
and shine on the world
like loving sunlight.
Shine like the Sun of Tabriz rising in the East.
Shine like the star of victory.
Shine like the whole universe is yours!
-Rumi
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Can you now remember
what the mind worked so hard to forsake?
Are you living? Are you dead?
Are you none of these?
you lie so still upon the ground
I look upon you and smile
breathe once more, you will see
sing for your suffering
dance for your despair
you are the sword's razor edge
tested in flames
coming home
the strain of madness
can hold you no more
the fire, nothing more to consume
your lover is here
to kiss your wounds
and pour the sweet wine
Awake, awareness practiced perfect
to hear the whispers of soul
the winds of ten directions
amidst the concrete cacophony
amidst the seduction of sound and fury
in courageous awareness of awareness
awakening falls like a plum from the tree
living death, the illusion of separation
castle walls, prison cells
running, hiding from devils
running from ourselves
still, there is a moment of choice
can you see for who you are?
or do you still desire your torment?
ripe plum, open, what you once thought were eyes
and the fading nightmares fall away
beautiful butterfly, they were your cocoon
you can still see and be of form
but need one, you do not
let it not possess you, but serve you
and the knowledge of who you are
light, dark
being, nothingness
Your heartbeat, echoes over canyons
melody of the way
harmony with souls that seek
the rhythm of lovers
who love, and die, and love again
So many choose the false
through choice or ignorance
crippled terror in asylums of mind
yearning hearts buried alive
why bother to speak?
words can no longer express
cry, laugh
moan in delight
dance in sweet silence
Oh, the brilliant light becomes you
another great light in the heavens
your light, draws the darkness awake
someone calls your name
- Sajan
Access: Public
Whoa! Sajan!…your poem is quite intense!
I was surprised to see Rumi's poem so intense…then YOURS! Beautiful!
Sajan! Beautiful Tantric Poem!
Thank you!
with love!
Cheyenne
Dear Sajan…I had wished to come back and play with your poem…I had wished to the other day..time did not permit…and even now I have four minutes before rushing to soccer games!!!……
Once you have seen
the dream of truth,
the illusions of death and time…
why make choice
to awaken the illusion to that which is far beyond 'mine'.
Just rest
and make no mind of whatever that you may see
do not reject the fruit or the tree
and when you are ripe and lose and free
awareness will grip your soul
she rises in a moment, like death with no calling
and transforms your every cell
you cannot become aware
only remain out of the way
what is to come will give you a vision anew
it will melt your mind
and free your awareness
which was part of the illusion of truth
it is difficult to know
even harder to withstand
the light of a thousand suns
death is certain
death is certain
death is certain
death is certain
when the resurrection comes
OK….now I have 30 seconds to rush out the door!
big hug…all my love! Cheyenne
Hi, one last time…I have driven one child to soccer..now one more!
Just to clarify death…
death of the practice
death of your mind
death of what is yours
and death to what is mine
death to your awareness
and death to what's to come
It is outrageous to enter the moment of truth
it is black and brilliant
and has nothing to do with you
vast is the gap…and quick does it come
you'll laugh if it happens
and wonder why you speak
does it really even matter
to set others free
they are not anyway..
who will you tell?
Just go on and play…
and do your best to say.
This is a game for fools,
this enlightened chase
to wish to ride the biggest wave!
but once you have tasted
you'll hit your head
and know that everyone
is the walking dead
yet their light is brilliant
its hidden inside
you'll know it and love it
and ache and cry
you'll grab every soul
and know they are you
and kiss and hug them
and try and tell them the truth..
….oh, I'm Dr. Suess!…….
I kiss you my friend…and now i must go!….soccer awaits one little soul!
(laughing!)
truth beyond truth
awareness beyond awareness
walking on the path
flowing with the river
we see today’s belief
become tomorrow’s illusion
What is it I seek?
the perception, the wisdom
to stop the questions
stop the seeking
release the limitations of thought
and the intolerance of how it should be
and allow
allow new perception
allow transformation
allow understanding beyond comprehension
allow death
look upon and smile
eyes wide
breathing deep
surrendering to the rapture
flowing through me
oh god!
Oooooohhhhh, nice!!!!!!….beautiful.
Your words are so fine
and now we will see
how many hells
you can withstand
the burnings intense
no one can say it is not real
where there is heaven
remember there's hell
Lucifer will rise and test you
Know it is the buddha
for no one can pass
if you hit bottom,
you'll certainly rise
and moutains will greet you
and open your eyes
you'll bow to the mist
of the world you once saw
and know it is god
god is all
just never question
just as you say
keep your eyes open
and never do say
what one thing is
nor what it is not
and surrender to the rapture
after all is lost.
Oh YESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! This is awesome Che!!!
I was touched so deeply AND laughed my ass off when I read how you opened your poem in light of what I had just experienced.
I got to the trailhead too late, it was already 98 degrees. I was not prepared, not enough water, not enough training this week because of the heat, I chose a hike for today I had not been on since the cool, cloudy days of spring, and for most of it I took the steepest ascent. OH, I felt like I was burning the whole time. When I left the house I had ice water in my bottle, when I sipped my last, I could have made tea in that hot water.
But in the dusty feelings of thirst on the way down, I stopped thinking about the cool drink I’m going to buy on the way home, I felt my thirst, I stayed present with my thirst and I said to myself “there is nothing I can thirst for, all I need is here,” and felt no thirst and I was still present, I felt something, but I cannot describe it.
And then when my thighs started their achy tremble as I came down some steep sections, I said to myself “there is nothing that I lack, all is here,” and the results were similar. On the way up, when I would think about turning around and I would say to myself “this is my hike, this is my pain, experience it.” All this is one of the main reasons I prefer to hike alone. When you hike with someone else, there is the ego, the competition or maybe just the support from outside. Hiking alone is such a spiritual thing for me; all guidance and support must come from within or from nature or from the spiritual guides I connect with. And then between all these spiritual experiences hiking down the mountain I am singing to myself the first verse of Red Hot Chili Peppers' Suck My Kiss. This makes it all the more fun.
I think I’ll go again tomorrow…… a hell of a lot earlier!
Now it’s 111 degrees, and time for poem play……
I was born and raised
in hell
but too many times
I ran from the devils
and our home
so they came back to visit me
again and again
until I faced them
until I faced myself
how many MORE hells
can I withstand?
As many as it takes
no matter how intense the fire
to consume what is false
and face what is real
I have died so many times
I want this next one to real matter
Jim Morrison said
“No one here gets out alive”
All the things we thought were so important
All that we clung to for security
All the rules that we made
All the roles that we played
All part of the journey
They cannot pass
the descent to hell
the hitting bottom
they will not rise again
only what is fit
for the new kingdom
will rise again
rise from the depths
Oceans and Earth
forests and mountains
sky and stars
All was god
All is god
now I see
Just to clarify death…
death of the practice
death of your mind
death of what is yours
and death to what is mine
death to your awareness
and death to what's to come
Absolutamente Master Che! Ditto to the third power!
The Rumi poem is about physical death and the entrance into heaven. Mine is about the death of all that is false to awakening. In my mind I saw an ascended Master standing over a newly awakened that has passed out on the floor and when he opens his eyes he will know he is awakened. So we are talking about the same death….. and me learning to understand a little deeper.
These two lines:
death to your awareness
and death to what's to come
I feel so powerfully and they inspire me to respond separately to just these two… I feel these in my heart still and I cannot find words yet to express, but I know they will come.
You entire response is so beautiful and deep, golden! I am still mining the gold inside me. More to come on this!!
Thank you so much Awesome Che!
SO much love!
Sajan
Awesome Master Che! It is with honor and humility that I attempt to put in my own words, the message, the truth that you have shared in these following words and your poem that follows it. I hope I can come close:
death to your awareness
and death to what's to come
The mind attempts to understand and explain all. It makes laws so that the behavior of nature can be predicted. I am amazed how scientific principals utilized by great minds have been able to create notions such as “there is no objective observer”… the very act of observation, influences what is being observed. We can evolve from the dogmatic believes that some patriarch is controlling all, to the point where we see our own thoughts and actions influencing the act of creation itself. But mental notions can take us so far in our understanding.
Then there is the intelligence of our emotions, our heart, our link with our natural instincts through which we can perceive truth and love. Our “heart” is like our sense organ where we can receive guidance from inside ourselves and beyond ourselves. But the sensing through the heart can only go so far.
Then there are the concepts of Being and Awareness, and the open attention to the moment without the judgment of or resistance of the mind. And awareness can open senses in the spiritual realm beyond just the heart or mind. We can notice our thoughts and our feelings in full awareness and sense more and more than we have before. But this will only go so far.
Then there are all the ambiguities and paradoxes of the spiritual path. If the potentiality of all creation is in the emptiness of the void, and god is the connected existence of all Being, and god is the potentiality of all creation, how can god be being (everything) and potentiality (nothing)? And then there is the beautiful ambiguity of The Heart Sutra:
“Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. Form itself is emptiness, emptiness itself form. Sensations, perceptions, formations, and consciousness are also like this.
Shariputra, all dharmas are marked by emptiness; they neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease. Therefore, given emptiness, there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no formation, or consciousness; no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of sight…no realm of mind consciousness. There is neither ignorance nor extinction of ignorance…neither old age and death, nor extinction of old age and death; no suffering, no cause, no cessation, no path; no knowledge and no attainment.”
What about existence needing non-existence so that existence maybe known? What about our devils being angels colored by our own perception? What about the divine need for testing and temptation so that the soul’s character may be defined?
Mind and heart are connected to the light, but they are not the light, they can only perceive the light and they can do so only with limitations. What if ambiguities were not ambiguous but only seemed that way with the limitations of our comprehensive capacities? Let’s suppose that in the mind of god, these do not seem ambiguous at all. Being is a concept that can expand our faculties, but then like a balloon in the atmosphere it will reach a height were it no longer ascends. Awareness is a compass that leads us to understanding of our true nature, but just like a compass that directs to magnet North on the earth, once you get close to magnetic North, the compass will become erratic and ineffective. There is a guidance and perception beyond all these concepts that can be achieved in expanded awareness.
death to your awareness
and death to what's to come
Awakening in the enlightened “mind-being-understanding” of god, is to release the need to use any of the tools, concepts or abstractions we have know, to release any definitions or identifications or understandings of self. To release them and let them die. Then there is the perception of the brilliance and darkness of light that could not be comprehended before, and all resistance and judgment and fear, must be gone to embrace. There can be no identifying anew with any conceptualization of self because all is connected. All is as it should be. So why speak? Why do?
But most do not see this and do not allow themselves to understand. Most identify and connect so strongly to what the “divine process” is trying to burn away from them, that they are burning and dying and dying and dying again…. The babies are getting thrown out with the bath water because they won’t let go of it. It is the loving compassion of the bodhisattva that reaches out to the un-awakened souls, to release what hell is trying to burn with heavenly purpose.
Thank you so much for your wise and enlightened sharing Che, I hope I captured at least some understanding of it.
All my love,
Sajan
Wow! Sajan! I shall come back to this certainly! Yet before I do, you ripped at my heart speaking of Shariputra! Did you read the Amitabha Sutra?
He loved the Buddha so dearly. Once while kneeling at the feet of Buddha, Shariputra was so empty, and Buddha's divine grace began to pour into him. And Shariputra looked tearfully up and said, 'No!..please do not do this. I wish to remain with you, worshiping you. If you continue, I will attain and become one with you.” Buddha did refrain, but already the grace had happened…he told him only a matter of time. And in a short time, Shariputra did attain, and he left weeping, weeping. The diciples could not understand this weeping -'did you attain?” Shariputra announced, yes, he had attained, and now he is one with the Buddha, yet he missed dearly the tread of separation he once had in the form of worship. When he left, every day he would bow in the direction that he knew the Buddha was traveling. Even on the day of his death, he arose and bowed in the direction of the Buddha.
It touches me…it touches me very much.
Your words are wonderful. It is 2 a.m. here…I will first dance, sit and then return to your words.
I will say beforehand yoru words are stunning.
About not speaking, I can say this, it has nothing to do with 'this' side of the fence. What experiences I personally have had, enlightened states have NOTHING to do with individuality…and the Lord Buddha gave the most precise path to realizing it. YOU are nothing..reduce your attachment to everything about 'you'…whatever you think 'you' are, and then the possibility comes to meet what is beyond. Because we tend to believe enlightenment has something to do with us…like WE will become enlightened. If I were to try and express this to individuals, they would feel 'what does that have to do with me?' All I could do to help them come to this, would be what Buddha did, keep telling them of their non-being..then they would come to the eternal. So why speak? What to say?…..People say they are interested in enlightenment, hmmm!…no, they are interested in themselves, which is the very barrier, has nothing to do with enlightenment. It's a jump…a leap, a sudden experience from anything and everything you've ever known
Oh…YOU have a brilliant mind, Sajan!
I enjoyed so much reading what you have written.
I shall certainly return!!!….
All my love!
Just beautiful, Sajan ~ sincerely!
Cheyenne